


Dawn's Light

by ThunderBoltLoveStory



Series: Our Shifting Hues [2]
Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, M/M, Prequel, Science Fiction, Threats of Violence, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-05 06:27:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5364863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThunderBoltLoveStory/pseuds/ThunderBoltLoveStory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Duncan Jones is a fairly regular, although academically talented, seventeen year old, with nothing more to worry him than his A Levels, avoiding arguments with his dad, and hanging out with his friends. Nothing more to worry about, that is, until a former acquaintance called Lewis Brindley offers him a job at his new tech start-up. It’s an easy job: all he has to do is prove himself as a scientific and tech genius, push the limits of the physical world, get along with his quirky colleagues, justify ethically questionable design choices and bring it all in under budget. All while trying to get into university and, just maybe, finding himself a girlfriend. Suddenly the world just became a lot more complicated...</p><p>*This story is the prequel to "How Love Finds Us". You don't have to read that story to understand this one, but it is recommended you read that one first.*<br/>[As usual, this is a fictional story, not intended to be an accurate portrayal of real life figures, etc.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Duncan: A New Proposal

_Quick Note_ : If you have not yet read “How Love Finds Us”, please consider reading that story before starting this one! Although this is the prequel, it is not necessary to have read HLFU to understand this story, but this story will definitely ruin some of the twists and turns of HLFU. Consider this a spoiler warning!

 

_**Duncan** _

The slow tick of the clock on the wall was the only sign that time was moving forward at all. The classroom was swelteringly hot and humid in the way only an early autumn heatwave could be. Everyone in the class reclined in their seats, with ties undone and buttons loosened, limp as wilted flowers. It was 2:45 in the afternoon and the heat of the day was just beginning to pass. It was the last class of the day and even the most eager student had taken to staring out of the window in anticipation of that final bell that announced the end of classes.

Duncan was one of the few still writing in their notebooks, but he wasn't doing any work - at least not anything the school would consider work. He twirled a mechanical pencil between the tips of two fingers, then hunched over the desk and added several more lines to a sketch of a robot, its case opened wide to reveal its mechanical workings. He was aware that somewhere far away, his teacher was attempting to teach A level mathematics, but his mind was fixed on something much more advanced. He knew everything the lecturer could have hoped to teach him already. It was only when a heavy maths textbook slammed down on his desk that he was brought back to the present, jumping in surprise and his glasses sliding off the end of his sweaty nose.

“I have told you about drawing in class, Duncan Jones!” the teacher yelled, stirring the rest of the class out of their own stupors. He picked up the notebook before Duncan could react and tore out the offending page.

“Drawing robots… ridiculous. Seventeen and you're behaving like a five year old. Maybe if you listened in class instead of drawing, you'd live up to your potential instead of squandering it!”

Duncan straightened his glasses on his face. He certainly hadn't been the only one not listening, but he was used to Mr Henry picking him out unfairly. He'd been in the sixth form for less than a month and he'd already received two write-ups from this teacher. The injustice burned in his stomach. Why him? He glared up with a dark look that made the teacher start and then he seemed to grow even angrier for having been startled.

“If you're not going to pay attention, you can go sit in the supply cupboard,” Mr Henry said, tearing the page into pieces and scattering the remains back on the desk. “Now!”

Duncan stared silently at the pieces of paper for several seconds, then grabbed his bag, jerked out of his chair and stalked out of the room. Although he was one of the younger sixth formers, he was tall and broad and strong enough to make the door shudder in its frame when he slammed it shut behind him. Mr Henry would probably write him up again for that.

The cupboard was to the left, but he turned right and took the stairs down to the ground level instead. It was too hot and he wasn't going to sit in a cupboard for almost an hour. He was leaving and if that got written up too then Mr Henry could go suck a dick. Duncan felt a twinge of regret that he hadn't retorted in the classroom or just punched him in his stupid smug face, but that would just have got him in more trouble than it was worth…

He pushed his long blond hair out of his face as he emerged into the bright sunlight. In a way he was lucky. There was a cooling breeze out here that hadn't reached them in the stuffy classroom. If Mr Henry hadn't started ranting then he wouldn't have been able to slip away. Turning his back to the breeze, he pulled out a cigarette packet and his lighter and lit one up, taking a long breath and holding before exhaling in a long sigh. He unwound his tie from around his neck and stuck it in his trouser pocket, a corner of blue and silver stripes peeking out. Then he visibly relaxed and walked down the front steps of the college, back out into Bristol. A few cars passed on the road but this quiet corner of the city was his and once he crossed off onto the footpath home he was all alone.

He made his way back home, a light haze of smoke trailing behind him as he walked before blowing away into the air. Soon his anger had faded and his mind began turning back to the same old topics that fascinated him: robotics; mechanics; science. It didn't matter that his diagram had been destroyed, because all the real blueprints were in his head. In fact, it gave him an excuse to start again, to improve and design it bigger and better than before. An automaton 2.0. He daydreamed of artificial intelligence all the way home, finishing his cigarette and grinding it into the pavement under his heel.

The house that Duncan had called home for the last five years was unremarkable but pleasant. It was a victorian terrace in a middle class neighbourhood with a very small and tidy front garden and a red front door with a bronze knocker. He still didn't like it as much as the farm he'd grown up on with his parents and younger sister, but he had come to appreciate it after the dust from the divorce had settled. Although the farm had made for an idyllic childhood, as a teenager he wanted the opportunities that were only available in the city. He was far from the coolest guy in school, but he did have a decent group of friends and he had snuck out to meet them after midnight and head to an underground gig in a dodgy part of town more than once. That wasn't an option in the countryside.

At first he didn't even notice the small, dark blue fiesta parked outside. His dad was at work and his sister was still in school (and too young to drive anyway), so there was no reason for anyone to be calling at the house. It was only when he drew closer that he saw there was a young man, perhaps a few years his senior, sitting in the driver's seat. Duncan wrote it off as a visitor to one of his neighbours. Maybe old Mrs Perkins next door had a grandson, she was always talking about her grandkids, wasn't she? Only when he put his hand on the wrought-iron gate to go into his front garden did he see the man in the car look up. He was slim and dark-haired, quite ordinary looking really, wearing a fitting checkered shirt and jeans. Duncan could have sworn he looked familiar, but he couldn't quite remember why. Maybe he really was Mrs Perkins’ grandson and he had visited before? But the look of recognition in the man's face indicated that Duncan was the person that he had been looking for. Duncan paused with his hand on the gate as the small man gave a wave and then got out of the car. Duncan wasn't entirely sure whether to wait or to rush inside the house and pretend he hadn't seen a thing. In the end, a mixture of curiosity and politeness won out. He was sure he knew this man somehow and if he didn't figure out how then he would be annoyed by it all evening.

“Hello!” the man said as he approached, friendly yet sounding ever so slightly harried. “I'm Lewis, Lewis Brindley. Are you Duncan?”

Duncan nodded, shaking the hand that was offered to him. Lewis Brindley, now that sounded even more familiar.

“Did you go to Aversham?” Duncan asked, referring to his old high school. It was the only place that he could think of having seen the man. Trying to place him in any other club or group felt wrong.

“Yes!” Lewis said, with a relieved smile. “Yes, I was two years above you, I think? You'll be at the college now?”

Again, Duncan nodded. He wasn't quite sure what to say. Now that he had made the connection he could vaguely remember Lewis, a favourite of Duncan’s old science teacher Mr Malley. A bit of a nerdy guy if Duncan remembered right, although that didn't mean much. Duncan himself was a geek by most definitions and it didn't mean that he didn't know how to have fun. More importantly though, why was an old, distant school acquaintance here on his doorstep at three thirty on a Thursday afternoon?

“I realise this is a bit sudden,” Lewis admitted, as if reading Duncan's thoughts. “But I tracked you down because Mr Malley always said you were one of the best students he ever taught.”

Duncan's heart swelled at that. Mr Malley had passed away unexpectedly just before the summer vacation and no student had been as distraught as Duncan. He had been glad to move to sixth form college after that. School wouldn't have been the same. Hearing the second hand praise made Duncan feel more willing to hear Lewis out, which was helpful since his next words seemed ridiculous.

“To cut to the chase, I want to offer you a job. An internship, if you'd rather call it that. I can't offer you a lot of money right now, but with any luck it won't be long until I can afford a lot more.”

Duncan blinked.

“Of course, I appreciate that you're still in sixth form and I suppose you'll be aiming for university… well, I'm willing to accommodate if you don't mind giving up a lot of your spare time.”

Duncan found his voice. “A job? What kind of job?”

“A science and technology start up. I want someone I can train as my assistant and Mr Malley mentioned in the past that you had a talent with machines.”

Duncan felt like he needed to sit down. It was too hot for surprises. He leant back against the garden wall and pulled out another cigarette, lighting it and taking a drag before replying.

“So I work for you, you pay me, and I get to work with machines? And you'll let me work around my college work?”

Lewis nodded. It seemed almost too good to be true for Duncan, who currently stacked shelves on the weekends under the most bitter boss in all of history just to keep himself in CDs and cigarettes. There had to be a catch.

“How about you come and see the new building on Saturday afternoon?” Lewis suggested, seeing Duncan wavering. “No pressure, just keep an open mind until then? How does that sound?”

It sounded reasonable to Duncan, who certainly didn't mind the opportunity to call in sick to the supermarket, so he swapped numbers with Lewis and was given the address to the company in exchange. It couldn't hurt to have a look around, although there was a small part of him that worried that this was all an elaborate scam to trick him into being kidnapped. He figured that he was a bit old to be kidnapped now, especially by a weedy guy like Lewis.

With that agreed upon, Lewis departed in the little car and Duncan went into the house. Suddenly he felt like there were a lot more questions he should have asked, but he shrugged it off by telling himself he could ask everything he liked on Saturday. In the end, a job was a job, right? If there was something dodgy or he wasn’t getting paid enough then he could just quit. It’s not like he’d be homeless.

It was all a bit weird though.

He went through into the kitchen with its familiar white-and-blue tile. The house was nicely decorated and very neat and tidy, like something out of a home decor magazine. Not the kind of house that seemed like it housed two teenagers at all, but his dad was a stickler for tidiness and had hired a maid to clean daily. Within minutes Duncan had strewn the counter with a cereal box, several pieces of runaway cheerios, and a small puddle of spilt milk, all of which escaped his notice as he carried a heaped bowl of cereal through to the lounge. This was also fashionable in a minimalist style. He kicked off his shoes and lay on the leather sofa with his feet up. The cereal bowl left a white ring of milk on the low, black coffee table.

He put on the satellite TV and found the channel that was playing old Simpsons reruns from ten years ago. It was background noise as he redrew the robot that Mr Henry had destroyed, but every so often he got caught up in the show and was distracted from his work. The phone rang about an hour after he got home and his sister’s voice on the answering machine let him know that she was at a friend’s for dinner and wouldn’t be home until that evening. His dad wouldn’t be home until late either, but Duncan didn’t need a phone call to know that.

At six o’clock he went to look in the fridge, but it was about as empty as usual. If only they could pay the maid to do the shopping too. There was some pasta and vegetables, but Duncan was about as good at cooking as the average teenager, so he phoned up the local pizza place instead using the details of his dad’s credit card. He’d memorised those numbers a long time ago and his dad didn’t seem to have noticed yet. Within half an hour, he was chowing down on delicious pepperoni pizza.

It slowly grew dark outside and Duncan put his sketches away and went to play some games on his computer, but he soon quit out and leant back in his swivel chair. He just felt restless. The heat of the day had finally cooled and the air coming through the open windows was actually quite cold. He slouched from room to room, pulling shut the windows that had been opened by the maid during the day. Then he stomped up the stairs to his attic room and lay on his crumpled bedsheets underneath the skylight. The stars were out somewhere up above, just visible above the city’s light pollution.

His room was the only one that didn’t conform to his father’s strict standards, but fortunately his dad didn’t come up to the attic very often to complain. The floor was dark, bare wood, the walls a dark burgundy red, only visible in small spaces between posters, pictures and assorted objects that ran into the hundreds. Posters carefully removed from _Kerrang!_ and _NME_ of current alternative bands hung alongside those from the early nineties or even earlier scrummaged from secondhand sales and charity shops. Most were music or movie related, but there were a few pin-ups mixed in among the rest, Playboy models or stills from topless models. Pride of place was a framed postcard signed by Deryck Whibley which some maniac had put up for sale in a car boot sale for only a few quid. Duncan had literally jumped for joy when his aunt had brought that home for him a few years back, before struggling to reclaim his surly fourteen-year-old cool.

He put in a CD and put on his headphones with the volume up loud and lay back. He would have died for a smoke, but he had learned not to smoke in the house since it seemed to be the one thing that set off his old man above everything else. He smoked leaning out of the skylight or not at all and it was too cold for him to be bothered, despite the nagging at the back of his mind. It turned out to be the right choice as the headphones were rudely pulled from his ears and suddenly he was assaulted with the angry voice of his father.

“...didn’t raise you to lie around like a lazy slob! And where is your sister?”

Shaking his head as though rising from deep water, Duncan focused in on what his dad was yelling about this time. “She left a message, she’s out at a friend’s or something. I’m not her bloody minder.”

“Don’t talk to me like that, it’s your duty to look after her, she’s only fourteen.”

In his head, Duncan thought, ‘No, it’s your duty, you’re her father.’ But of course, he said nothing. His father was shorter than Duncan by about three inches and more slender too. Yet Duncan still felt much smaller in his presence. Perhaps it was his father’s constant sternness, but he seemed to have an aura that was about a foot taller than he really was. Duncan didn’t have to feel physically threatened to be in trepidation of his father, but he hid that edge of anxiety under a flippant attitude that inevitably made his father’s moods darken further. He was sure that once his father hadn’t always been so on edge, but he couldn’t quite remember when that had been. Nowadays his father had a constant crease in his forehead, frown lines around his mouth and hair that was thinning on top and grey at the temples, even though he wasn’t quite fifty.

“She’s just at her friend’s. She’ll be home soon,” Duncan said, trying to reassure him, but somehow this only seemed to annoy his father more.

“Well I’m glad that you’re so sure. Would you even care if-”

Only the doorbell interrupted the rant and his dad descended the stairs. “You can hope that’s your sister and not the police.”

Following him with a tiny twinge of guilt despite his inability to affect the situation, Duncan went down the two flights of stairs to the door. It was, of course, his sister, home without her keys and without an apology for her absence. When she entered his father seemed to brighten in a way that he never did for Duncan. With a snort and a bitter expression, Duncan grabbed some soda out of the fridge and then went back to his room and put his headphones back on. He was uninterrupted for the rest of the evening, without so much as a “Goodnight!” thrown in his direction. It never would have occurred to him to tell his father about the job offer and he doubted that it would have interested his father even if he had. If anything, his father would have criticised him for wanting to leave a dependable job at the supermarket for a risky place at a start up, then he would have been criticised for having a job at all instead of spending more time working on his studies. Duncan would have been happy to follow this advice and be lazy instead, but then he wouldn’t have enough money to do anything fun at all.

He fell asleep well after one in the morning, when the rest of the house had long fallen quiet. By the time he woke up his father had already left for his job in the city centre at his architecture firm. His sister was already meticulously dressed in her school uniform with not so much as a hair out of place as she sat on the sofa finishing her cereal and watching television. When Duncan suggested she not stay at her friend’s all evening, she just rolled her eyes and he couldn’t say he blamed her. It wasn’t her fault that their dad wanted to blame Duncan for not micromanaging her life in the way he felt appropriate. In the end, Duncan just told her to do whatever she liked and then stomped off to make toast. She left shortly afterwards for school and he was alone in the house again. It wasn’t long before he had to leave too, trailing out of the house with his shirt half unbuttoned and his toast in his hand. He knew he’d probably be late, but it didn’t seem worth it to rush after the trouble he was probably in from yesterday.

Surprisingly, no trouble came though and when he walked into his chemistry class ten minutes late, he got no more than a tut. Miss Walker was a thin, pale, older woman and she although she was strict, she was much more reasonable than Mr Henry, who fortunately Duncan wouldn’t have to see until Monday. She did give him a disapproving word at the end of the session, warning him that if he was late to her class again then he’d be out of labs for the rest of the week, but it went no further than that. He finished some work in the library before lunch, ate with his friends in the break, then went to physics with his favourite teacher at the college, Mr Tobias. A lot of the other students complained about Mr Tobias, who was old, grey-haired and often wandered off into tangents of theoretical physics that nobody could follow. Duncan loved him, not because he could follow these tangents, which often left him far behind, but because he couldn’t. Unlike most other teachers who only taught the syllabus and nothing more, Mr Tobias gave hints to stretches of science far beyond A Level or even university level physics. It fascinated Duncan to listen to someone who knew so much more than he did, yet was quite humble about his lack of knowledge. It was worlds apart from Mr Henry who boasted about his university degree as if that qualified him as some kind of genius, while in practice he seemed to struggle to teach the basics of the A Level course.

At the end of the day he went to hang out with his friends at the abandoned car park which the local skaters had repurposed for their own needs. He didn’t skate himself, at least not well, but he was more than happy to sit and smoke on the guard rails with his group of friends while they watched the more adventurous members of the group setting up plyboard ramps and collecting injuries like pokemon cards. Still, he couldn’t help but find himself distracted. When the latest ramp collapsed, sending a younger kid sprawling into the gravel with some gnarly scrapes, he didn’t even join in the cheer. He couldn’t help but have his mind wander back to Lewis’ offer and the visit to his business the next day. Duncan hadn’t mentioned it to his school friends, who would undoubtedly find the whole thing weird. They tolerated his geekiness and the fact that he tried hard enough in college to sometimes spend his lunches working in the library, but it wasn’t exactly an encouraged topic of conversation. In the end he didn’t stay out late, making an excuse and heading back home. He let himself in quietly, avoiding another argument and went to bed.

It was almost midday when Duncan woke up on Saturday, with the bright sun pouring in through the skylight and directly into his face. When he dragged himself out of bed he’d forgotten about the meeting with Lewis entirely, despite all his worrying about it the day before. It was only when he was halfway down the stairs that he remembered it all in a panic. He almost tripped over trailing leg of his pyjama bottoms as he ran to the shower and then scrubbed at his hair in an effort to look semi-presentable. This was like an interview, of sorts, wasn’t it? Although it seemed like he might be the one asking the questions. This thought relaxed him a little bit.

Once he was done in the shower, he chose out a pair of his newer jeans and a plain, fitted, white t-shirt. He felt a bit silly in deliberately picking out clothes just to impress some guy who used to go to his school, but he also didn’t want to turn up in tacky old clothes and have Lewis change his mind about the job offer. It was still a casual outfit after all, not a suit and tie.

He made his way to the kitchen with his hair still dripping water and ate more toast for breakfast. His father regarded him critically over the weekend newspaper, the delicious smell of a half-eaten english breakfast wafting up from his plate and making Duncan feel more hungry than ever.

“Where do you think you’re running off to? Shouldn’t you be at work?” his father asked. “If you insist on working there you might as well have the courtesy to be on time.”

“Day off,” Duncan said hurriedly. “I’m going out.”

“Hanging around the shopping centre with those teens from your school?” his father sneered. He gave a light snort, then returned to the paper. “Don’t get arrested.”

Duncan rolled his eyes, but only when his dad wasn’t looking. He didn’t feel insulted, just relieved that his dad wasn’t asking any more prying questions. The toast jumped when it was done and he snatched it hot from the toaster and spread on some butter before grabbing his phone - the latest 2004 Motorola flip model - his wallet and keys, before heading out into the city.

It was a long walk north from his house, through the city centre until the smart commercial buildings began to become a little more industrial. It took him a while to find the street, wandering around in the hope that it was somewhere nearby. When he finally located the street in question it was slightly run down and Duncan almost thought that he must have the wrong place, but he spotted the small ford fiesta parked up outside a white-washed brick building between two workmen’s vans. From the general hubbub of construction coming from within, the building was obviously undergoing renovation. Duncan supposed that was okay; if he could afford to pay builders, then clearly Lewis had been doing something right.

The building itself was unremarkable and didn’t seem to have undergone much regeneration from the outside. It was Victorian era, with a tall, slim, brick chimney out the back that read ‘kery’ in faded black paint over the white wash. Someone’s old bakery, Duncan could only assume. The roof was grey slate, with small plants growing from the guttering, and two arched glass windows were smashed at the side, but the doorway was new and the sturdy white metal door appeared out of place among time’s depredation. The window here at the front had also been replaced with a simple but functional plastic-coated frame. Through the glass, Duncan could see that the interior had been stripped back and two builders were remodelling the walls to make a modern working area. At the back, sitting at a small, wobbly table with a small folder of papers, was Lewis. He had a slight frown on his face as he valiantly tried to make progress while the builders worked around him.

Duncan knocked at the door, but evidently he couldn’t be heard above the pounding of hammers, so after a moment of hesitation he walked into the room. Lewis looked up and his frown smoothed into a smile. He slipped the folder into a briefcase with twin locks and then got to his feet and shook Duncan’s hand.

“Hello!” he said, gesturing for Duncan to follow him back outside. “Come on, let’s talk out here.”

Lewis led him outside, but around towards the back of the building. The building itself was not large, only a little bigger than Duncan’s house, but the area of land that was enclosed by the surrounding fence allowed plenty of opportunity to expand. For a place not far from the middle of Bristol, Duncan was surprised someone hadn’t already snapped it up for building new apartment complexes. There were two small huts on the far side of the compound and in between was a cobblestoned yard with a lot of weeds peaking between the stones. Duncan very much hoped that Lewis did not intend for him to be the one to remove all those weeds.

“I’m glad you came,” Lewis said, once they were far away enough from the construction to be easily heard. “I do know how strange it must be to have me turn up on your doorstep the other day.”

“Yeah,” Duncan admitted, running a hand through his hair. Even though he told himself that it was up to Lewis to convince him to join this company, he still couldn’t shake a nagging worry in his stomach that he would lose out on the opportunity. It was just that tantalising promise, of getting to work with machines, maybe even robots, and to get paid for it? Even if Lewis had already said he couldn’t afford to pay much - understandable if this was where he was working from - if he was offering the kind of work that Duncan hoped, then Duncan would’ve worked for free.

“Well, no matter!” Lewis said, with a cheery air. “Let me show you around and tell you what we’re working on here. It’s not much yet, not much at all, but we have a lot of potential.” He looked up at the building, then back to Duncan with a slightly more sheepish expression. “Well, I say ‘we’, but I suppose I mean ‘I’. It’s only me, right now. But trust me, if you join then you’re only the first of many, I assure you. Anyway, come on.”

Duncan found himself trailing behind the shorter man, kind of captivated by his awkward bumbling. Despite his manner, there was something within Lewis that made him seem so sure of himself that Duncan wanted to believe him.

“So this is our main building,” Lewis said, pointing back at the building they had just come from. “Obviously it’s not much right now, but the renovations are planned for that one. It’s going to have a reception, my office, a large working area and some storage rooms, bathroom, small kitchen, plus space for another couple of offices. It’ll be nice when it’s done, no more birds in the ceiling.” He pointed to the two other huts at the opposite side of the yard. “Now those I haven’t done anything with yet, but I’ll expand over there once our current building is full, or else I’ll knock them down and build a much larger manufacturing area. It all depends on our needs at the time. That’s what I like about this site, it has a lot of room for expansion. Plus the fact it was free, of course,” he smiled, adding, ”A fortunate inheritance.”

Lewis looked quite pleased with himself, but Duncan cleared his throat uncertainly. “And, eh, what is it that we’ll be expanding? I mean… what do we actually do?”

“Ah!” Lewis said, brightening as if Duncan had just suggested something marvellous. “Well, you must understand that I can’t go into absolutely everything until you work here and sign to agree you won’t… well you won’t steal any of the plans,” Lewis added, a little awkwardly before recovering. “But, you see, this is a science and technology start up and so we are free to develop anything we can get our hands on. I already have a great idea that I worked on last year at university. If I can just put a little more work into it, I think I can increase the speed of processors by roughly ten percent. Ten percent faster, from one modification! I just need an alloy that won’t melt… but if we can get that off the ground, Duncan, by god we’d have all the funding that we need. I want to move into machines and gadgets, robotics, all of that good stuff. It’s my dream!”

He spread his arms, looking out over the ruined compound and for just a moment Duncan could imagine it as Lewis must picture it in his mind’s eye: gleaming machines, a factory to manufacture the world’s most advanced technology, a workforce of eager young scientists and mechanics. NASA would come to _them_. But then Duncan blinked and the illusion was gone. He was just an A Level student and Lewis couldn’t be more than, what, a second year university student? Maybe he had graduated early. Duncan was amazed that Lewis had managed to get enough money just to renovate this site, never mind funding the kind of research that he wanted to carry out. But if he had been lucky enough to inherit an entire industrial site, maybe he had a lot more money than Duncan would have thought.

“So did you graduate and then set this up straight out of university?” Duncan asked. “It is quite impressive.”

“We don’t need university!” Lewis said impulsively. “I left when I saw what I could do on my own. All those professors would have loved to steal what I can make.” Lewis turned to Duncan, that ambition still burning in his eyes. “I want you to become my assistant, Duncan. If you do want to go to university then I won’t get in your way and I won’t stop you from working on your A Levels either. But trust me, you come and work here and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. I’ll pay you £50 a week and I promise it’ll go up once we start pulling in more cash because I want you to work here as many hours as you can spare. I’ll give you all the electronic parts you want to play with and anything that you design I’ll help you make, as long as you work hard to help create the things I need from you. I’ll train you how to do it. What do you say?”

Duncan didn’t rush to reply, but took a moment to think it over. £50 wasn’t a lot more than he made at the supermarket and it seemed like Lewis expected a lot more work in return. Yet, he would get to make anything he liked and Lewis would pay for the parts? That was worth a lot more money and he could hold Lewis to his promise of a higher wage if they ever turned a profit. Of course, that was the main concern really, wasn’t it? Lewis seemed just a little crazy about the whole thing. He had dropped out of university, by the sounds of what he had said, to put all of his funds into this? Well, at least he was committed. And the best part was that Duncan _didn’t_ have to be committed. If it all went tits up, it wasn’t _his_ money on the line. He’d have lost his supermarket job, but he could find another one fairly easily. In the end, what was he really losing by taking a chance on Lewis?

“Okay,” Duncan said, a smile breaking out on his face. “Yes. I’ll come and work for you.”

“Fantastic!” Lewis said, showing a rare grin. “Excellent! This is the start of great things for you and I, trust me. Now the place is still getting fixed up, so I don’t expect you to start immediately, but give it a week, okay? Next Monday, the start of October, you come here after you finish at college and we can begin. I’ll get you a contract, a non-disclosure, all of that silly legal stuff, and then we can begin.”

He was already pacing back towards the building, as if he had half-forgotten that Duncan was still standing there, but he wheeled back around and looked up at Duncan thoughtfully. “Was there anything else you wanted to ask? Anything you wanted to see? I don’t mean to rush you out at all, there’s just so much to do and not much that you can help with yet.”

Duncan shook his head. Everything seemed to be coming at him a bit quickly. There were a lot of things he wanted to ask, really, but they were mostly impolite questions including “Are you quite sane?” and “How exactly did you end up with all of this money?” so he kept his mouth shut for the time being. Lewis gave another tight smile and then shook Duncan’s hand again.

“Great, great. Well, you come back next week then and I’ll sort you out. Hopefully we’ll be looking in better shape by then! Oh yes, I think so.”

Lewis gave him a nod and then reentered the building, leaving Duncan standing outside by the front door. He felt like a strong wind had just blown past and left him standing in a dense pile of new information. Lewis had already returned to his rickety little table and was writing in his file again. Duncan watched for a few seconds and then turned to leave. So, he had a new job. At least he would get to phone up the supermarket and shove his resignation in his old manager’s face. If only he didn’t have the sinking feeling that he was wading into something that was way over his head...

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the prequel to How Love Finds Us, as mentioned above. I had the idea for this story while writing the first and since HLFU got such a good response I decided to take a break and then come back to write this prequel. It will not focus on a lot of the same characters as that story (no Kim, no Hat Films, I can see you losing interest already!) but does feature most of the 'original' Yogscast and Duncan is a major character in both stories. While reading this story might not completely ruin the twists in HLFU, it definitely gives a lot of spoilers for that story so I suggest reading that one first. Also, since HLFU is set in the present day, this means Dawn’s Light starts off in 2004.


	2. Lewis: Storm Clouds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lewis tries to make progress with his designs and his business, but finds himself faced by seemingly insurmountable problems.

 

_ **Lewis** _

It was very early on Wednesday morning when Lewis woke up in his cold, cramped flat. The days were warm with this unseasonable heatwave, but the nights got so cold and he had forgotten to turn the heating on. Not that he would have turned it on had he remembered, now that he thought about it. Keeping the flat warm in anything but the most dire winter storm was something of a luxury for him on his current budget. Every penny that he dropped on keeping himself comfortable was just going to get him one step closer to bankruptcy and that was hastening towards him at a frighteningly quick rate as it was. £150,000 had sounded like a great deal of money eight months ago, but between tax and getting the builders for the site and paying his own rent… well, he still had a decent amount left, but the math wasn’t adding up any more. At this rate, he’d go into the red before he could turn his company around.

He dragged himself out of bed to boil the kettle and put on another pair of socks. The sun was rising now over the buildings of Bristol and soon it would be warm again, but in the meantime a cup of tea would have to do. He put a pan on the stove and fried two slices of bacon for a roll. When it was done he sat at the kitchen table and stared at it for a while. By the time he could actually bring himself to eat, the sun was streaming in through the window and the bacon was lukewarm. It still tasted good.

The sun had taken the edge off of the cold, so he went for a shower and was relieved to find that the water wasn’t freezing. Once he had dried and dressed for the day, he actually found himself feeling quite good, but soon the same dark cloud was hanging over his head again. The money, the time schedule… Lewis let out a sigh. He had hoped that hiring an assistant would speed the process along, but he had to balance that out with the money he was losing to pay Duncan. He could only hope that their old teacher hadn’t praised Duncan too lightly. If he was as clever as poor old Mr Malley had suggested, then just maybe Lewis could beat his balance sheet and get his project finished before the money was all gone…

Not that he was going to hang it all over the kid’s head of course. Duncan was still a school student and had exams to work on. Lewis had made sure not to worry him about the state of the company. Start ups often had these kind of problems, didn’t they? If he could just get one key backer or a rich investor… At any rate, Lewis wasn’t an unkind person. If he ran out of money to pay Duncan, he would make sure and let him know in advance rather than trick him into working for money that he would never receive. If he fucked up, he wasn’t going to go out of his way to screw everybody else over too. This was his company and he was going to be fully responsible for it.

The builders wouldn’t arrive on the site until after nine o’clock, but Lewis left early in the hopes that he could get started on his work early. It was actually quite difficult to get anything productive done while the builders were noisily working away, but he was too paranoid to leave them on their own for too long. He couldn’t afford to have them cut corners or waste time on his money. They hadn’t given him any reason to doubt them yet, but he wasn’t stupid. He was a young guy trying to supervise a project all on his own and any slightly dodgy builder would see him as an easy target. All the better to keep a close eye on the workers and handle any warning signs before it became a big problem.

He collected all the blueprints and files for his current project and put them in his little double-latched suitcase, then brought them down to the car. He turned the engine over once and it refused to start, but that wasn’t irregular. The second time he turned the key, it roared into life - as much as the little car could be said to ‘roar’ - and then he was off. It wasn’t too far from his flat to the work site, but it was further than he was eager to walk, especially since he couldn’t guarantee that it would not rain on the way home, even in the middle of a heatwave. It was still England, after all.

It was shortly after 8am that he pulled up in front of the old victorian era building. It didn’t look like much, but the survey his uncle had carried out shortly before his death showed that although there were a lot of problems, the main structure was still sound. It had just enough promise to be worth fixing up, so Lewis had taken on the challenge. He dreamed of what this little compound might one day be, once the company was successful and he had the money to really change things around here…

He settled down at his little rickety desk which was so far of the modern luxury that he dreamt of, but he didn’t allow himself to be disheartened. How many great businesses had once been a guy in a garage with dreams of superior technology? The one thing they all had in common was that their founders didn’t let their meagre surroundings get them down, but had kept persevering regardless.

Lewis laid out the blueprints on his desk. This chip, if he could just get it to work, could increase the speed of high end processors by up to ten percent! That was a huge difference, if he could just find a way to stop it from melting at full power. The alloy was wrong, he knew that much, but he wasn’t sure if he had to try and find a new one or if there was perhaps another work around. A fuse here would work, but it would limit the output to only two percent faster. Perhaps if he…

His phone rang, startling him out of his thoughts. He swore. With the doom cloud following him around and reminding him constantly of his money woes, Lewis had found it all too difficult to get on with his work recently, so to be disturbed just as he was finally getting back on track was a real annoyance. With a sigh, he pushed aside the plans and picked up his phone.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Mr Brindley? This is Manuel Clementine.”

Lewis’ heart sank. That would be the accountant. _The_ accountant. His uncle’s accountant and close personal friend who oversaw the funds he had inherited.

“I’ve been looking over the numbers on Harvey Jay’s account.”

It was always Harvey Jay’s account, never Lewis Brindley’s account. In Manuel’s eyes, the fortune was very much still the property of his deceased uncle and Lewis was a child, squandering that hard earned money in the most foolish of ways.

“It’s nice to hear from you, Mr Clementine,” Lewis said wearily, as a show of politeness.

“I should hope it’s a warning to hear from me, Mr Brindley,” Manuel said sternly. “You realise at the rate you are spending this inheritance, you will be done before Christmas? The tax year ends in April, young man, and if you aren’t able to pay the upkeep on the site by then… Not to mention this company you’ve set up will be bankrupt.”

“Yes, I had been thinking about that,” Lewis said, in as neutral a tone as he could manage. Nothing like pulling the rain clouds back over his head. He sank back in the chair, all thoughts of his chip design thrown completely out the window.

“Well, I’m glad you aren’t unaware of the situation,” Manuel continued. “But have you thought about what action you should take to avoid the financial ruin of Harvey Jay’s estate?”

“My estate, Mr Clementine, it belongs to me.”

“Well,” the voice at the other end of the phone suddenly became rather huffy. “If you would like to assert your right to ownership by losing the estate entirely, don’t allow me to get in your way!”

“No, I’m sorry Mr Clementine,” Lewis sighed. Having a successful accountant willing to advise him - for free! - was no small gift to throw away. Even if that advice often made him want to rip the wires out of his telephone and throw it in the bin. “I didn’t mean to offend. I always welcome your advice. As a matter of fact, I have taken steps to shorten by schedule by hiring an assistant.”

“Hiring? You must be joking, you’re spending more money?”

“A student, Mr Clementine, not a fully qualified scientist. With his help, I hope to get through the work at a greater rate and increase productivity enough to more than offset the cost of his wage.”

Lewis pulled a face at his own use of buzzwords, glad that the old accountant couldn’t see him.

“I also hope you can increase productivity, Mr Brindley, but hopes don’t mean much in business. I wish you the best, I really do, but even old Harvey… he liked to take risks Mr Brindley, but they had a knack of paying off in the end. I do, so very much, _hope_ that you have inherited that trait from him and not just his estate.”

“Yes, Mr Clementine. I do too.”

“I will contact you in the future. Please continue to update me with figures. Goodbye, Mr Brindley.”

The phone clicked and then the dial tone rang loudly in Lewis’ ear. He put down the phone, suddenly burning with frustration. He hated this, he hated _business_ , he just wanted to invent and change the world and have enough money to never worry about money ever again! He didn’t need to be Bill Gates and be a billionaire, but he wanted to do something that mattered and get the credit he deserved. Was that so fucking hard?

The van pulled up outside and the builders arrived with a jolly “Alright there?” Lewis nodded, staring down at his plans on the table as though they might just fix themselves if he willed it hard enough. But it was no good. The financial storm clouds had well and truly established themselves over his head and his creativity seemed to dissolve away to mush like so many autumn leaves in the rain.

 

\---

 

The rest of that day proved to be a bust and another chilly night in the flat didn’t improve his mood one bit. By the next morning, the weather seemed to have changed to reflect his mood. The heatwave had broken and the rain clouds had slowly made their way east overnight. When he woke up the sky was a heavy slate grey and rain seemed no more than a few minutes away. He got up, drank his tea, realised he had run out of bread and ate one last single piece of bacon. He wasn’t so poor that he couldn’t afford to buy groceries, but it seemed like such a hassle. After a night of broken sleep he was lethargic. The clammy dampness of the oncoming rain didn’t help his energy levels. He ended up falling asleep in his chair for another hour after breakfast, so that he didn’t leave the flat until almost nine o’clock.

The first few spots of rain appeared as he pulled up to the office, the builders already there and working away. At least they hadn’t taken his absence as an opportunity to muck around. That, at least, was a positive thought. He went inside, just as the rain really began to pour and set up at his desk. The plans lay in front of him as usual, but Lewis found himself looking at the raindrops on the window instead. The builders had paused in their efforts, hoping the worst of the rain might pass before they started making more trips between the building and their van. The elder of the two, a man in his late forties, stood in the doorway and lit up a cigarette, trying to keep the smoke out without letting the rain in. The younger, who seemed to be in his mid-twenties, caught Lewis’ attention.

“Are you having trouble, mate?”

Lewis looked around to the man, tanned and strong from working outdoors all summer, while Lewis was skinny and pale and had dark rings under his eyes from a lack of sleep. Not for the first time, Lewis felt a pang of jealousy for those who just did a job and did it well and then went home at night and forgot all about it until the next morning. People who didn’t spend all their free time hunched over bits of paper and tried to coax their brain into solving riddles. Lewis loved what he did, he was driven to do it, he didn’t feel like there was anything else he could be happy doing… yet he did wonder, from time to time, if there might be something else that he was missing too.

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Always helped me to go for a walk and think about things,” the man said. “Although, maybe not the day for it,” he added, nodding to the window. Perhaps a little embarrassed at this tired conversation, he just shrugged. “Good luck with it, anyway, mate.”

With that he went over to his older partner and joined him in smoking. Lewis sighed and leant back in his chair. The builder was right. It was pointless sitting at this desk every day, worrying about the same problems and trying to change the same plans, as if doing the same thing over and over would ever have a different outcome. A walk, a change of scenery, might at least provide him with some new things to think about.

The weather, very considerately, soon accommodated his decision by moving on overhead and leaving dry weather behind. It was still cool and windy, but that was just autumn. The clouds were less oppressive and it seemed like it might not rain again for a little while. Lewis grabbed the initiative and left the building before he could change his mind.

He made his way through the old industrial streets, making a beeline for the nearest green space. When he saw trees he took a right, rounding the corner onto a sizable grassy park. On the opposite side of the road was a small café, the kind run by a single old woman who handmade sandwiches every morning and used a little too much butter. Lewis’ stomach growled from his lack of breakfast. Buttery sandwiches sounded delicious right now. He went into the shop, bought sandwiches, crisps and a drink, and then went into the park to eat.

The park was beautiful in the sunlight that followed the rain. Each leaf glistened in a different shade of green, yellow, orange and red, everything completely still except for the infrequent bead of water that ran down the centre of a leaf and fell to the grass below. It was almost empty, since nobody else had wanted to venture out into the wet weather. Only one bench was taken, the only one that was situated under a tree and was therefore still dry. Normally Lewis wouldn’t have intruded on a stranger’s position, but it was the only place he could sit without looking like he had wet his pants and he was too hungry to walk on and wait to have his lunch later. The man didn’t seem like a bad sort anyway; only a couple of years older than Lewis was, with a round, cheerful face and a magnificent ginger beard. He was quite soaked through and clearly had been out in the rain for longer than Lewis.

“Wet one today, eh?” the man smiled, a moment after Lewis had unwrapped his sandwiches.

“Tell me about it!” Lewis muttered, taking a bite. He hadn’t anticipated having a conversation with the stranger, but he wasn’t against the idea either. More importantly, he sure as hell wasn’t leaving when he’d just started to eat.

“I was handing out CVs and I got soaked in it,” the man sighed. “I guess they’ll be no use now.”

He indicated to a pile of soggy wet mulch by his side that had, presumably, once been a pile of useful resumes. Lewis felt a pinch of sympathy for the stranger. It had probably cost a decent amount to print out so many CVs and now they were all ruined. It was rough for somebody without a job.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Lewis said. “Have you been looking long for a job?”

The man shrugged. “About three weeks. I was working in a call centre, but I had a bit of a… disagreement… with the manager. I guess I find it hard to get along with arseholes.”

“That’s probably not something you should put in your CV,” Lewis joked.

“No, no…” The man suddenly held out a hand. “The name is Simon by the way.”

“Lewis,” Lewis replied, shifting his sandwich and shaking the guy’s hand. It appeared they were now friends. Lewis cemented this new friendship by offering Simon his opened bag of crisps and Simon took two.

“So what is your plan now?” Lewis asked, after a few moments.

“I guess I’ll take anything I can get,” Simon said. “Probably going to end up in another call centre with my luck, but anything to pay the rent. My flatmate left last month too, so now I have double the rent and it’s just bad timing.” He gave a wistful sigh, “I just wish I could be my own boss, you know? I’d love to be able to work my own hours, not have to answer to anybody… but what kind of company am I going to create, huh? I don’t have any special talents.”

Lewis gave a slight smile. “I don’t know man, this ‘being your own boss’ thing isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. It’s very stressful.”

“You have your own business?” Simon said, his ears practically pricking up like a dog. “I don’t suppose…”

Lewis shook his head, knowing he probably should have expected that. “Nah, sorry. Trust me, we’re going to go broke before we make any money at this rate. It’s really not easy to get a bank to give you a good loan when you’re twenty years old. Like I said, it’s stressful.”

“Ah,” Simon nodded. A silence fell between them for a few moments as Lewis finished his sandwich. With a slight fumbling at his pockets, Simon pulled out a few small slips of paper and showed them to Lewis. He held five scratch cards, possibly the only dry things on his entire person.

“Maybe you’ll think I’m silly,” Simon said. “But I was so fed up that I thought I might as well buy a few tickets. I thought, ‘I’m having so much bad luck, I must have stored up some good luck that’s just waiting for me to use it’. Of course, now I’m thinking I maybe should have bought lunch instead.”

“Maybe,” Lewis agreed. It did seem stupid, gambling away your last few pounds, but he still eyed the cards curiously as Simon took out a penny and started scratching away at the covering.

“Oh my god!” Simon suddenly screamed.

“What!?” Lewis said, grabbing at his own chest in shock.

“Nothing,” Simon said, tossing the card onto the pile of sodden CVs and giving Lewis a grin at having successfully scared him. “I lost.”

“Jesus, don’t do that!” Lewis protested, unsure if he might have just had a small heart attack.

“It makes it more fun!” Simon grinned, before frowning as the next card came up with nothing as well. “Bollocks.”

“I mean, you don’t expect to win, right?” Lewis asked.

“No, but… I want to!”

Lewis rolled his eyes, but thankfully Simon wasn’t looking. He was scratching away at the third card and then he had a look of triumph and he let out a cheerful cry. “Yeah! £10 motherfucker, doubled my money.”

Lewis laughed at how pleased Simon looked at himself, but he still voiced caution. “Yeah okay, just don’t get carried away. Know when to quit.”

Simon gave him the same glowing smile, “Not yet!” He scratched off the fourth card and found nothing once again. “Just you wait, this is the _really_ big one.”

“Oh, sure,” Lewis said sarcastically. “I bet you win a million.”

“Jesus Christ!” Simon shrieked again and Lewis nearly fell off the bench.

“Don’t _do_ that!” Lewis complained again, but he froze as he saw that all the colour had drained from Simon’s face as he stared at the scratch card. “You’re _joking!_ ” Lewis cried, looking at the card over Simon’s shoulder. It wasn’t a million, but the number on the card was clear as day. £250,000. “Holy shit!”

Simon suddenly beamed as the realisation hit him that he had actually won. “I… I… I won!” Then he fake gasped and pointed at Lewis, “And you _doubted_ me!”

“Well, it was very unlikely- Never mind! You just won a quarter of a million quid! You’re, like, set for life!” Lewis did a little bit of mental maths and readjusted his position. “Well, you could buy a house anyway, no problem.”

“I’m going to be a quarternaire,” Simon said dreamily, as Lewis silently mouthed the word ‘quarternaire’ and firmly rejected it from having any place in the English language. Then Lewis’ brain kicked into gear and he realised that the answer to all of his problems was sitting right in front of him. If only, somehow, he could convince him to invest most of that money into Lewis’ floundering company, then he would be saved. He was sure that Simon would come out with more money in the end too, if he was prepared to take a chance. How to convince him though? Lewis tried to figure out the right thing to say, but in the end he didn’t need to, because Simon beat him too it.

“This is fate!” Simon exclaimed, suddenly looking from Lewis to the ticket and back. “This has got to be. You said you can’t get a bank loan, right? And I need a job. What are the chances that you, a person with a company that needs money, would sit down on this bench in this park next to me just when I win enough money to fund you.”

“I don’t know,” Lewis admitted. “Astronomical.”

“Yes! Unless it’s fate,” Simon repeated, having thoroughly convinced himself. “Obviously I should invest in your company and then you can give me a job. It’ll be like having my own business, but even better.” He bit his lip slightly and put on a more serious face. “You will try your best, won’t you? You won’t lose all my money if I help you?”

Lewis put on his most sincere face and put a hand on Simon’s shoulder. “I swear to you,” Lewis promised. “I won’t fuck this up. I won’t lose all your money. I’ll get us a contract, make everything all legal and I won’t screw you over. If you help me out, you’ll be saving my ass.” Lewis tried to make it seem like a sweeter deal. “Co-founder, that can be your title, and you’ll get a sizable share of all our future profits.” Potential future profits, that was. Suddenly Lewis felt like he was sweating. He couldn’t believe he was moments away from solving his biggest problem.

“Okay,” Simon agreed, “I believe you.” He held out a hand again and Lewis shook it enthusiastically. “You write us a contract and if I like it, I’ll invest in your company.”

They talked for a little bit longer, but Simon couldn’t wait to claim his cash, so they soon parted ways. Lewis had to seriously hold himself back from skipping the entire way back to the office. The moment he got back he called Mr Manuel Clementine and informed him of the upcoming investment. He wasn’t entirely sure that the man believed his story, but nonetheless they arranged for a meeting at the end of the week where everything would get sorted out.

The first thing he did when he got home that night was put his heating on so that his flat would be nice and warm to wake up to the next morning. Then, still high on his good fortune, he sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of tea on one side and a stack of engineering textbooks on the other and dedicated several hours to figuring out a key problem with his current chip design. With the stresses of owning a business lifted from him for a few days, he found himself making progress for the first time in weeks. By the time he went to bed, well after midnight, he had identified a weakness in the current alloy and narrowed down a list of metals to experiment with for a replacement.

Progress, which had seemed so slow, suddenly seemed to rush ahead with no sign of stopping. Lewis and Simon had a meeting with Mr Clementine and a lawyer and formally agreed upon the investment into the company. With his future seeming assured once again, Lewis formally announced the formation of the company Yog Inc., and set about working on his chip designs with a renewed vigor. The builders finished their work on the main building and Lewis and Simon suddenly had their own private offices. On Monday, Lewis picked Duncan up from his sixth form college and was proud to show off their newly furnished premises. The teenager seemed thoroughly excited and even more so when Lewis went into more detail about the projects they would be working on together. He appeared to have no qualms in signing a contract with the company to officially join as a member of staff.

For Lewis, the skies seemed to have cleared. At the end of that week, he ushered Simon and Duncan into the main reception, to unveil the little surprise he had cooked up for the three of them. While Duncan and Simon looked on with expectant faces, Lewis opened his suitcase and pulled out some little signs he’d had engraved for their desks. ‘Lewis Brindley’, ‘Simon Lane’ and ‘Duncan Jones’ of Yogs Inc.

 

 


	3. Sjin - The Last Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sjin works at an intern at a fancy company in London, but today is the last day of his internship. Can he convince his boss that he is the right intern to give a full time job?

 

**_Sjin_ **

Today was the day!

Sjin scrambled out of bed and reached for his ringing alarm clock. Normally he would have been tempted to snooze, but not today. He jumped out of bed, feeling more awake than he ever had at five thirty in the morning. The kettle was waiting for him in the kitchen and a cup of coffee beckoned. He was too nervous to eat a proper breakfast, but he forced himself to chew down a piece of toast anyway before going for a shower. Today was the day!

His flatmate Matt, a junior in the financial sector, appeared a little after six looking half-dead with a hangover. Sjin had politely declined an offer to go out in the city centre the previous evening and seeing the result, he was quite relieved for his good sense.

“Rough night?”

Matt put a hand to his forehead. “It wasn’t that bad until Andy decided to fucking propose to that Italian boy and then demanded we all go to Soho to celebrate properly. It was only meant to be a couple of drinks, but I swear I got back ninety minutes ago.” He gave a slight groan. “I should still be drunk, how can I have a hangover already?”

He took a slurp from Sjin’s coffee mug and gave a small grunt of contentment. “Good night, I guess, but I swear if everyone is planning on getting one of these civil partnership things then I’ll never get a full night’s sleep again.”

“When have you ever?”

Matt tipped the cup of coffee, “True. About time you stopped being so boring, lad, start coming back out on the town. There’s a whole city of beautiful men out there while you’re staying in like an old maid.”

Sjin just gave a shrug. He had lived in London for a year now, but he still wasn’t used to how wild the gay scene could be. He’d come from a west country village where being gay just wasn’t talked about, so those first few months learning to be out and proud in London had been a special time in his life, but now? Well, now Sjin had a reason to stay in at night and get to work on time.

He left the flat just after six thirty and walked out into the breaking daylight over the city. From his flat in the Docklands he could just see the skyscrapers of central London, but it would take almost an hour walking and on the tube before he got to work.

He walked along the river and around the edge of Greenland Pier, among the masts of the boats and small yachts that belonged to Londoners a lot more wealthy than himself. About fifteen minutes away from his flat was the station of Canada Water, a clean, modern station that was less crowded than his transfer station at Waterloo. He sat among the crowds of early morning commuters, standing after his shift to the busy Northern Line. The whole time it was difficult to keep still. In his anxiety he wanted to pace the carriage, but that was impossible. He contented himself by fidgeting with his backpack, checking for the tenth time that he had packed all of the necessary files. Of course it would have been too late to go back for any that had been missing, but fortunately all were still accounted for.

The tube ride seemed to take much longer than usual, but in actuality it was right on time. Sjin dismounted at his usual stop - Leicester Square - and walked another ten minutes to the great office tower where he worked for at least one more day. Yes, today was the day. The day he would find out who got the job.

It was already almost seven thirty, so he calculated the time in his head: ten minutes in line at the Starbucks across the street would get him a reasonable coffee, but ten minutes walk would take him to a small, locally owned café that the boss really liked. Could he make it there and back to the office before eight? What would the best Personal Assistant do?

He set off at a fast stride, passing by the Starbucks chain and the Costa Coffee. to the better café two streets over. It was more expensive, but the queue was shorter when he arrived and, more importantly, Sjin had heard the boss say that he loved the place. They could make a cup of coffee as thick, dark and strong as old engine oil and they weren’t cheap with their quantities either. Sjin got that for the boss and a moccachino with extra whipped cream for himself. The barista turned his nose up slightly at that addition to the order, but Sjin didn’t care what some acne-scarred teenager thought of him. He had a much older, much more successful man to impress.

By the time he got his order it was ten to eight and Sjin hurried back down the street as quickly as he could without getting sweaty and gross. It had turned into a hot day already as the country experienced an unseasonable autumn heatwave. Apparently it was almost over, with the west already getting rain, but here in London it was as warm and humid as it had been for more than a week.

It was 7:58am as he stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the eleventh floor. He cursed silently with every stop on the way up, as others got on and off, but he exited the lift right as the clock hit 8am. That bitch Rebecca was already here, but Ethan wasn’t in yet and thankfully neither was the boss. Sjin let out a sigh of relief. He put the boss’ coffee on his desk, which adjoined the other two interns’ desks, then started sorting out the documents he had brought in his bag. He looked up from his bag on the floor to see Rebecca looming over him, her straight bleach-blonde hair hanging down and leaving all of her face in shadow except for the tip of her pointed nose.

“Is that your plan?” she demanded in a haughty tone that was her attempt to cover up her Essex accent. “Get him a coffee? You’ll have to do better than that.”

“It’s just coffee, not a bribe,” Sjin replied stiffly.

Rebecca gave him a scowl, then very deliberately reached out and slapped the coffee across his desk. Across all of the papers. Across his months of hard work.

For a moment he stared open-mouthed, with a lump in his throat.

“This is _my_ job,” the girl hissed. “A fairy like you doesn’t have what it takes.”

Sjin jumped to his feet, red faced, and he might have strangled her right then and there if the elevator doors hadn’t opened with a ping and in walked that familiar figure with his dark hair and colourless face. Even in his business suit, he gave off that air of manly ruggedness, like he’d just stepped in from his part-time job as a lumberjack in the Canadian Rockies. Sjin’s heart sunk.

“Oh, Sips, Sir,” Rebecca simpered, stepping forward to take Sips’ suitcase as he surveyed the scene. “I’m sorry that you had to come in to such a mess. Sjin spilt his coffee all over the desk! He’s so clumsy.” She looked back at Sjin with a look of pure malevolence.

Sips turned his emotionless black eyes to Sjin. “Is that right?”

“Yes Sir, sorry Sir,” Sjin said. What good would it do to protest? It would only make him seem like a liar, someone who couldn’t take responsibility for his actions. “But I got you this coffee instead.”

He held out his own sugary moccachino, which he fortunately hadn’t begun to drink. Sips took it slowly and looked at it for several seconds.

“It has whipped cream,” Sips said suspiciously. Sjin winced. Sips had never indicated any fondness for sweet drinks. If anything, Sjin would guess he disliked them. Perhaps it had been foolish to offer it as a replacement. Sips slowly took a drink. He licked cream from his upper lip and then after a moment gave just the barest hint of a smile. Sjin gave a tiny sigh of relief.

“This is clearly a dessert,” Sips said. “But I could learn to like dessert for breakfast. Then I could have more bacon in place of dessert.” He swept his hand over the mess of spilt coffee. “Clean this up.”

He strolled into his private office and shut the door behind him. Sjin eyed Rebecca with barely restrained fury, but he knew better than to lose his temper with her. The door certainly wasn’t soundproof.

“I hope you cry when Sips picks me over you,” Sjin whispered.

“As if.”

The lift pinged open again and in walked Ethan, the american intern. Sjin wasn’t too worried about him for competition. Ethan was consistently late, frequently absent and occasionally stoned. In fact, Sjin was amazed that he hadn’t been fired months ago. Rebecca was his main concern. Although Sjin knew that he was better, he would be lying if he said Rebecca was incompetent. A cold-hearted, lying, manipulative bitch, but a talented PA. The worst part was that it was only her personality that was ugly. What if Sips decided that all he really wanted was a pretty face? He certainly wouldn’t put it past Rebecca to sleep her way to the top.

Of course, if Sjin was given half a chance…

That thought made him go red in the face, so he tidied up his desk and tried to rectify the damage that had been done. Fortunately a few documents were saved to his PC and another few were only lightly stained and could be easily copied. There were at least three that were totally destroyed though. Sjin prayed that it wouldn’t ruin his chances.

Sips didn’t emerge from his office until the mid-morning, so Sjin had time to salvage everything that he could. He had just stacked everything up on his desk when Sips entered the room and examined his three interns.

“Okay,” Sips began. “As you know, my number one rule of business?”

“To keep on top of the competition, Sir,” Sjin answered immediately.

“Right,” Sips nodded. “But not just keep on top of them, but stamp on them and crush them mercilessly…” He tailed off for a moment, as though lost in the cheerful memories of crushing his competition. Thinking of Rebecca, Sjin found he could relate immensely.

“Anyway,” Sips said. “I’ve heard a rumour that there is a new start-up in Bristol that may become competition to our Sipsco Tech Division. I don’t have a name for it. I want the three of you to research and let me know who you can find by the end of the day. Then, I suppose, I’ll announce my choice for the PA position.”

He went back into his office, leaving them alone. Sjin and Rebecca took one look at each other and then ran to their computers and telephones. The implication in Sips’ words had been clear - whoever could dig the most information on this new company would have the advantage for the new position.

Sjin started flicking through his old address book, feeling confident he had the advantage here. He was from the west, he knew several people who lived in Bristol now, and at least one of them owed him a favour. If he could convince one of them to go down to the town hall on his lunch break and request a search with the council records… Surely Rebecca wouldn’t be able to match that? In the meantime, there were other records to search, and he could try online too, although Rebecca would most likely have all those bases covered.

A web search turned up several websites, any of which might be the company that Sips had mentioned. One website looked particularly sparse, although Sjin couldn’t be sure if that was because the company was new or if the company was just really bad at web design. At any rate, he took down a list of thirteen different companies that he could find online and began whittling them down to contenders for the company that Sips was looking for. Several were too well established to be considered a new start up company, so Sjin was able to strike those off the list straight away. That left five possibilities, companies that seemed to have been started or expanded upon within the last six months and may have flown under the radar until recently. However, Sjin didn’t rest in working with this list, knowing that there could be other companies that didn’t show up online at all. It was time to call for that favour.

The first phone number that he called rang out and the second was not recognised, but the third number was good and a deep male voice answered at the other end.

“Hi, is that Bill? Bill Turner?” Sjin asked. “This is Sjin. Remember that New Year’s Eve when you left your wallet at my house and I drove across two counties to get it back to you before your flight to Berlin? Well I’m calling in that favour…”

Bill was decent enough to step up to Sjin’s task and took down a list of instructions. Sjin asked him to go down to the council office and ask for a list of new businesses and premises that had been registered in the last year within the city limits. If he sent Sjin the raw data, then Sjin would do the rest.

While he waited on that information coming through, Sjin wondered if there was anything else he could do to convince Sips that he was the one to pick for this job. A sensible part of his brain told him to relax; it had been months, surely Sips must have a good idea already of who he wanted to pick. As much of a bitch as Rebecca had been, she had probably been right to say that just getting him a coffee wouldn’t cut it. But the much larger, much more _Sjin_ part of his brain was eager to do anything that would give him that extra edge. Rebecca just couldn’t understand - it wasn’t _about_ getting the job. Sjin had a degree from a good university and now he had a good internship under his belt. He was confident that he could find a decent position at a lot of different companies in this city. But those other companies didn’t have Sips.

In the end he decided the best thing he could do was to keep working over lunch and do the task that Sips had assigned them. What good was lunch and coffee to Sips if his employees didn’t do the tasks they were assigned? Confident in his decision, Sjin kept working over lunch. He was pleased to see that Rebecca was working too rather than working out some other way to get the advantage. Ethan, naturally, had sloped off to get lunch before midday and had been gone for almost an hour already.

It was after one o’clock when the bell buzzed, indicating somebody trying to enter the building at ground level.

“Oh my, who could that be?” Rebecca asked, in an overly bright tone that let Sjin know she had been expecting a visitor. He suddenly had a very bad feeling. The bell buzzed again and Sips looked out from his office.

“Sir, I arranged a special little lunch for us all,” Rebecca smiled angelically. “Since it’s going to be the last day for… some of us.” She looked very pointedly at Sjin for the last part and he accidentally crumpled a sheet of paper in his hand as he clenched his fist.

“Okay,” said Sips, not indicating surprise or delight at this proposal. Of course, Sips very rarely expressed surprise or delight at anything at all.

Rebecca pressed the button to allow in the delivery man who had a range of delicious food arranged on platters in handy snack-size portions. The whole thing must have cost her a fortune. Having gleaned from the last few months in her presence how much debt she was in, Sjin realised that she must be _very_ sure about getting this job.

“Ah, cheese pizza, my favourite,” Sips said, taking this platter straight out of the delivery man’s hands. “I’ll take that one.”

Ethan arrived back, just as the last of the food was being set out. “Food? Sweet.”

“Didn’t you just go out for lunch for…” Rebecca checked her watch. “An hour and a half?”

“Yeah, but it was just, like, lunch. I can make room.”

Rebecca rolled her eyes, with that same disgusted scrunch-nosed expression that she usually reserved for hurling insults at Sjin. Turning his back on her and her food, Sjin silently kept working.

“You aren’t hungry, Sjin?” Sips asked.

The stress went out of Sjin’s shoulders when Sips addressed him and he reluctantly turned back to his superior.

“I guess I am a bit.”

“Well, pull up a chair. I’ll send the rest of this down to Marge and the girls in reception after we’re done and you know there won’t be any left when they are finished.”

Feeling self-conscious about the whole thing, Sjin left his desk and picked up a slice of pizza. There was a lot of food, more than the four of them could ever eat, even with Ethan swallowing finger sandwiches like he was in a professional eating contest. Sjin found that he didn’t really have an appetite for most of it and only ate one slice of pizza. Sips, meanwhile, had finished almost the entire platter of cheese pizza to himself and sat back in his seat with a contented look on his face. Sjin hovered on a knife edge between smiling and hating him.

_Don’t be impressed with this bullshit, don’t be impressed by this bitch._

Stretching, Sips got back to his feet. “Call the girls downstairs and tell them there’s food for them. You better all be getting on with that research.”

He went back to his office again, to do whatever high level work that he got on with all day. Rebecca had a slightly sour look on her face as he left and once he shut the door, muttered, “All that food and he just wanted fucking pizza.”

“If you don’t like it, you’re free to leave,” Sjin said sweetly.

“Shut it.”

Two receptionists came up and carried off the plentiful leftovers, while Rebecca and Sjin both threw themselves back into work. Sjin wondered what she was doing, if she had thought of anything that he had not and how he could catch up if she had. At two o’clock, he received an email from his friend Bill, with a long list of companies. Sjin started to shift through and marked them off the list one by one according to the category of business. By the end he had only two companies to add to his list of possibilities, but it was still worth the hassle.

The only thing left to do was to call the companies up and hustle until he got the information he required.

He worked his way down the short list, posing as the Personal Assistant to an interested investor. It was amazing how much information people were prepared to give away for just the vague promise of future funds. He managed to knock several more businesses off the list as he learned what their primary targets and objectives were, often not closely relative to technology development at all.

The last company on his alphabetical lists was the one with the half-finished website, a company called Yog Inc. Sjin had a good feeling about this one, as it was the most recently registered and the little information that there was on the website pointed to it being just the kind of business that he was looking for. He called up the phone number that he had found for them.

“Hello?”

“Hello, my name is Ryan Cosworth,” Sjin lied. “I am the Personal Assistant to a wealthy investor with an interest in technologically focused research companies. Recently he has taken a liking to your company, Yog Inc. May I ask who am I speaking to?”

For the first time, the voice on the other end of the phone became more suspicious rather than more accommodating. “My name is Lewis Brindley and Yog Inc is my company. Who is this _wealthy investor_ exactly?”

“My superior doesn’t like to commit to negotiations without more information,” Sjin fudged, cursing internally. “He is a very private man, if you understand me.”

“Oh yes? Well, I don’t negotiate with supposed secretaries of men who don’t even have a name. I’m not interested. I already have the investor I need.”

With that, the man at the other end of the phone hung up. Sjin swore quietly.

“Aw, diddums,” Rebecca teased. “It’s not going so well?”

“Shut up.”

“Shame, you were calling Yog Inc, huh? I phoned them an hour ago and had a _lovely_ chat with a nice man called Simon. He told me _everything_ I wanted to know…”

Sjin scowled, but he felt like the bottom had dropped out of his stomach. “You’re lying. You’re a horrible liar and you lie about everything.”

“Sure,” Rebecca said, with a supercilious smile. “You tell yourself that.”

Sjin turned away from her, but suspicion nagged at him that she might not be lying at all. Maybe the man, Brindley, had been so curt because the company had already received a prying phone call? Yog Inc had been easily searchable on the web, after all, so there was nothing to say that Rebecca hadn’t found them and called them already. Sjin had wasted time waiting on that pointless lead from his friend when he should have just been calling around straight off the bat.

The minutes and hours ticked on, but Sjin didn’t find any more useful information, no matter how much he tried. He felt himself growing more and more depressed. He had convinced himself that Yog Inc was the company that Sips wanted to know about and that smug look on Rebecca’s awful face showed him that she had a lot more information on them than he did. He was going to lose. The job was going to be taken from him at the last hurdle.

At half past four, Sips came out of his office and asked for what they had found. Sjin spent a few minutes typing out the scant information that he had and emailed it to the boss. He didn’t even look in Rebecca’s direction, knowing already the grin she would be wearing.

Sips had gone back inside to read the responses, but now he came back into the room. It seemed clear to them all that the time had come for Sips to announce who he had chosen for the job. Sjin, Rebecca and Ethan lined up in front of him, without Sips having to say a word.

“So, you’ll all be wondering who was the job. It’s been a long day.”

Sjin nodded. He was horrified to find a lump in his throat. He wasn’t sure what would happen if he didn’t get the position after all this time. He couldn’t cry. He couldn’t.

Sips started to speak, but suddenly Ethan interrupted him and stepped forward. Sjin watched him in amazement.

“You know, I know what you’re going to say dude, and I gotta tell you, I have to say no. I just came here to bang some English chicks and I did that pretty hard.” Ethan paused to look to Sjin for a high five. Sjin gave him a glare. He lowered his hand. “Anyway, these two want this way more than I do, so I have to turn you down.”

Sips’ calm face was unmoved for a moment and then his bottom lip gave a distinct tremble and he burst out laughing. “Get the fuck outta here, Ethan,” he laughed, leaning against the doorframe for support as he howled with laughter. “Go on.”

“Cool, cool,” Ethan said, slouching off. “I’ll say hi to my dad for you.”

It took Sips a minute to regain his composure even after Ethan had left. The waiting was killing Sjin who was starting to feel gross and sweaty again.

“Please, who do you pick?” he asked finally, unable to take the pressure any more.

Sips’ face was emotionless as ever, delaying no longer. “Sjin, you get the job. Rebecca, thanks for your time.”

He turned around and disappeared immediately into his office. Sjin felt stunned, unable to fully process how quickly his dream had been delivered. Rebecca seemed equally shocked, but then sank to her knees and let out a howl of pure horror which seemed to finally let it sink in for Sjin that he had won. He picked up her handbag from her desk and tossed it out into the corridor.

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, sweetheart,” he said, deliberately putting on his campest tones just to pay her back for every shitty, homophobic comment she’d ever hissed at him. She gave him such a glare of disgust that he honestly thought she might attack him, but she turned on her heel and left, having apparently lost too much dignity for one day.

Left alone in the office, Sjin allowed himself to celebrate, jumping in the air and pumping his fist, but keeping his jubilation as quiet as he could. On the other side of that door was Sips, now Sjin’s personal boss. Sjin wondered if he should just go and come back on Monday in his role as the perfect Personal Assistant, but his success had made him brave. He was going to make the first contact. He couldn’t skirt around Sips like a shy intern forever.

He knocked on the door and Sips called for him to enter. The office was the same as ever, with the large aged oak desk and the awards and certificates hanging on the wall behind it. There was an impersonal feeling to the office though; no pictures of family or friends or even a beloved pet. Not so much as a pot plant to give life to the place. It did make Sjin wonder if maybe, just maybe, Sips could be…

“Congratulations, my new Personal Assistant.”

Sjin looked at that self-confident smirk on Sips face and almost shivered. He felt so aware of the fact it was now only the two of them in the office, for maybe the first time since he had been hired as an intern all those months ago. He couldn’t tell if there was something in Sips’ look that was more than just the sincere congratulations of a new employer or…

 _Ok, calm down, Sjin_ , he told himself, swallowing heavily. _You can’t get ahead of yourself here. Even if he was gay, he’s your boss, it’s not all that easy._

“Is there anything I can do for you?” Sips asked.

_So much._

“I just wanted to ask why you picked me,” Sjin said tentatively.

“Doubting yourself already?”

“No! No. I’ll be the best PA you ever had. I just wondered why you picked me over Rebecca. She wasn’t bad at her job.”

Sips gave a faint smile. “Well, the girl was cutthroat. I liked that. But then I thought, why do I want a cutthroat employee when the only person she has to backstab is me? Maybe I want someone who is good at cleaning up the mess instead.”

Something about the way he said it made Sjin wonder. Had he worked out the incident with the coffee that morning? Or was he just speaking in a more general sense? Could it really have come down to such a little thing?

“Or who knows?” Sips said, looking amused when Sjin didn’t respond. “Maybe I just wanted a pretty face.”

 

 


End file.
